This invention relates generally to a seat post that can be fully raised or lowered, particularly on a mountain bicycle while the cycle is in motion.
While a bicycle seat is positioned higher, the seated cyclist is able to exert a greater amount of force on the pedals. Yet, the bicycle is vastly more maneuverable while the seat is fully down and out of the way. While riding on trails that are steep and challengingly bumpy, this lower seat position gives the cyclist a lower center of gravity, to avoid being thrown off the bike. An adjusting seat post assembly should therefore have the capacity to be fully lowering and fully adjusting.
There are a number of height adjusting seat post designs that provide an upwardly urging spring mechanism and a post locking means. Yet, most of these designs are not capable of full adjustment as they are limited in their range of operation by the type of main spring that is used in combination with a locking system that often gets in the way by requiring much of the room inside of the seat post.
For the cyclist there is an exact seat height that yields the greatest amount of propulsion from the bicycle. A system that immediately positions the seat post into this personalized, exact maximum height will reduce the time and effort that would otherwise be spent making readjustments while riding the bicycle.
A remote lever that is positioned on the handlebars of the bicycle is required for keeping the cyclist safely attached to the bicycle. A seat post adjusting system that requires the cyclist to remove one hand from the handlebars while riding over bumpy terrain would possibly cause the cyclist to dangerously loose control of the bicycle.
A bicycle seat post needs to be strong and lightweight relative to the added performance that a seat post or any other bicycle component may bring to the bicycle. In the field of height adjusting seat posts, the seat post assembly should also be as light and strong as possible. A seat post that is tubular and without any weakening openings to the exposed tubular surface, should therefore make for the strongest and the lightest seat post configuration.
Bicycling on trails of dirt and mud, an adjusting seat post assembly must be as dirt poof as possible to maintain the products reliability. Height adjusting seat posts with any exposed perforations or lock openings positioned on it would increase the likelihood of dirt clogging the main locking system and further bringing dirt between the telescoping pieces.
Use of a main air spring should also decrease weight and increase strength from having a generally tubular type structure. An air sprung adjusting seat post should also have a lightweight air dampening system to keep the seat post from rising up too fast. Yet, the adjusting seat posts presented so far, all do not provide a fully capable, adjusting seat post.
Zurfluh, U.S. Pat. No. 5,713,555, Hsu, U.S. Pat. App. No. 2009/0108642, Turner, U.S. Pat. No. 7,083,180 and McAndrews, U.S. Pat. App. No. 2009/0324327 all present main air spring seat post designs. Yet, they all simply position the seat post within the main insert sleeve to form a main air spring. These previous designs are extremely sensitive to dirt, as their air seals can be broken by any dirt that gets onto the seat post and is then lowered into the main insert sleeve. All these other systems, also do not include a lightweight air dampening system or have the capacity to access a personally adjustable maximum height set system for achieving a full span of height adjustment.
Hsu, U.S. Pat. App. No. 2009/0108642, Turner, U.S. Pat. No. 7,083,180 and McAndrews, U.S. Pat. App. No. 2009/0324327 all present main adjusting seat post designs that require the cable for the actuation lever to come out of the top of the moving seat post. Having the cable extend from the top of the moving seat post to the top tube of the bicycle frame, where it is first attached to the bike, creates a hazardous situation where the cable loosely dangles and may get caught on a piece of the bike or onto the rider to accidentally trigger the upward release of the seat post. Such an unexpected release of the seat post could be very dangerous while riding down steep and bumpy terrain. Therefore, a seat post that is height adjusting while the bicycle is in motion needs to have the cable, for the remote actuator, exit the seat post assembly from a non-moving part of the seat post assembly.